Richard Stallman's personal site.

Ballistic missile defense?

2002-02-04

Bush has proposed a large increase in military spending, including pay
raises for soldiers, reserves to cover the expenses of possible
combat, unmanned vehicles, and ballistic missile defense.

Some of these make sense, more or less. If war in some other country
is justified, and it may be, it will cost money. Raising soldiers'
pay is not a bad thing, though it is not clear we can afford it just
now. Unmanned vehicles are useful, but expensive, and we may have
enough already. But ballistic missile defense? What could be less
relevant to fighting terrorism than that? While it is conceivable
that a terrorist organization might develop nuclear weapons,
developing long-range ballistic missiles is far beyond them. It's
also unnecesary--terrorists have other, cheaper methods for delivering
bombs.

It's clear what is happening here: Bush is at his old tricks,
relabeling his old agendas as "fighting terrorism" and hoping that
Americans will be "united" enough to swallow it. He did this with
domestic surveillance (successfully); he did this with low-wage trade
treaties (outcome not yet known); now he's trying it with missile
defense.

On principle, ballistic missile defense is a good idea--it's better to
intercept a nuclear attack than launch one in revenge. If the system
were reliable, it would be worth some expense. But it is expected to
be very costly, and not very effective. There are many reasons to
doubt it could reliably intercept missiles, and it would be easy to
overload, spoof, or bypass.

If the system cost nothing, we might as well build it anyway--hey,
once every dozen nuclear wars, it might intercept a missle or two.
That's better than nothing, right? But it makes no sense to spend a
lot of money on a system we can't depend on.

No sense, that is, for the US or its public. It makes plenty of sense
for the companies that would be paid to build the system, if you
assume they are selfish and unpatriotic.